


The Family Affair

by scribblscrabbl



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternative Universe - FBI, M/M, Original Character(s), Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-06-05 13:54:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6706897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblscrabbl/pseuds/scribblscrabbl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s considering the inside of his fridge, its sad contents suggestive of both his long hours at the office and his relationship status, when the doorbell rings. He doesn’t look through the peephole first, another one of those risks he takes that Illya would label a character flaw, and swings the door open.</p><p>For a minute, he just stares.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Influenced by both Elementary and White Collar. I'd initially planned for this to be about 4k. As usual, things did not go according to plan. Hope you enjoy in any case! Feedback is always cherished.

On a typical Saturday morning, Napoleon lets himself indulge a little. He cracks an eye open usually around eight, drifts in and out of sleep for the next hour, sometimes two if it’s been a shitstorm of a week, and then gets up to make a pot of tea to give his body a break after five days of office coffee that tastes like detritus left over from the Cold War.

On this particular Saturday morning, he’s awake and alert at 7:15, not by choice, but by being bodily flung off his bed.

His first thought is, I’m going to die in boxer briefs, wrapped in my bed sheets like a goddamn mummy.

Then his attacker says in a suspiciously familiar Russian accent, “Get dressed, we have work to do.”

For an undignified second, Napoleon struggles to sit up. His partner is standing by the foot of his bed, arms crossed, not one hair out of place, frowning like Napoleon’s the one being terribly unprofessional and _breaking into coworkers’ apartments at the crack of dawn_.

“Did you _pick my lock_?” Napoleon manages to say, albeit a little weakly because, if truth be told, he’d be perfectly amenable to having Illya in his bedroom under slightly different circumstances – all the authority, the aggression, the rough edges, and none of the clothes.

“In under three seconds,” Illya says flatly. “I thought you enjoyed taking calculated risks, now I know you are just stupid.”

“Your concern is touching, Peril,” Napoleon says, pulling himself to his feet. “Now unless this work involves imminent death or mass destruction, I’m gonna have to – ”

Illya cuts him off, looking grim. “It involves both.”

*

Illya brings him up to speed before they brief Gaby, who brings in Waverly. Then they spend the next seven hours coordinating a raid with DHS to flush out a Syrian sleeper cell with Illya assigned to run point. Illya, who operates with the kind of focus and competency that makes no one wonder why the FBI borrowed one of Interpol’s best and brightest, and then never gave him back. 

Illya, who gets a message on his cell and abruptly tells them, “I have to take care of a personal matter,” before grabbing his jacket and turning to leave, knowing that even if they could fire him, they wouldn’t.

Napoleon stares stupidly for a second before stopping him at the door, thinking about lifting Illya’s cell from his pocket – one in a long list of tricks he learned on the wrong side of the tracks before he fell onto the right one – then crossing his arms instead.

“You’re joking, right? You have to leave _now_? This is your operation.”

Illya looks at him, the strength of his convictions like a goddamn steel wall, always. 

“If I am not back in time, then it’s yours.”

Then after a beat, he adds, quietly, “I’m sorry,” as if he doesn’t give a damn about the Bureau but it’s Napoleon he’d rather not disappoint if he had the choice. And for a second Napoleon panics, feels a feverish urgency clawing at his throat that reminds him of his first year with the Bureau and the hour he spent talking a guy down from a ledge of the Empire State Building, feeling the thin unraveling line between life and death under his own feet.

But before he can say anything, Illya’s already out the door.

*

They clean the cell out on Sunday before dawn with Napoleon running point and cross two names off the FBI’s Most Wanted list. By the time the news breaks Monday morning, Napoleon’s left Illya five voicemails and a dozen texts.

At noon, he’s leaning against the door to Gaby’s office, glancing at Illya’s desk – immaculate, sparse, devoid of personal touches save for the mug Napoleon gave him for Christmas that claims _This Is Probably Vodka_.

“You’d tell me if Kuryakin’s in trouble,” he says lightly.

Gaby looks up from her paperwork, blinking, then studies him with something that feels distinctly like pity.

“If it involves you, yes. Otherwise, no,” she says frankly, reminding him, purposely or not, of his place in the pecking order, and it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

“Because if he were,” Napoleon pushes, “I know he’d be too damn proud to ask for help.”

Gaby’s mouth twitches into a small smile, the kind she used to fall into freely when they were side-by-side in the field, before she traded in her gun for a corner office with an obscenely generous view of the Manhattan skyline. That the pang of nostalgia still leaves Napoleon a little wrong-footed after 18 months is something he wouldn’t admit on pain of death.

“If I didn’t know better, Solo, I’d think you were going soft.”

*

By the time Napoleon leaves the office at a quarter after six, he’s mapped out upwards of a dozen scenarios to explain Illya’s absence – three involving Interpol’s reputation for having a stick up its ass, two involving torture, one involving male strippers, and half where Illya never comes back.

He takes a long hot shower when he gets home, to try to loosen up the anxiety that’s wound its way up his spine, then pads into the kitchen to scrounge for food in sweats and his CIA t-shirt that no one else thinks is hilarious.

He’s staring at the inside of his fridge, its sad contents suggestive of both his long hours at the office and his relationship status, when the doorbell rings. He doesn’t look through the peephole first, another one of those risks he takes that Illya would label a character flaw, and swings the door open.

For a minute, he just stares.

It’s Illya. Illya is standing on the steps of Napoleon’s brownstone, carrying what looks like Napoleon’s favorite pastrami sandwiches, hair a little windswept, cheeks beautifully flushed from the chill, eyes that familiar, lethal shade of blue. Only – he’s wearing slim fit jeans, a blazer with brass buttons, _a skinny tie_.

Then he says, “You look like you could use some company,” flirtatious, cocky as hell, with a flawless American accent to boot.

To which Napoleon responds with, “Who the fuck are you and why are you wearing Illya Kuryakin’s face?”


	2. Chapter 2

After forty plus hours of radio silence, it takes Illya just short of three seconds to reply when Napoleon texts him, _the guy in my kitchen claims to be your twin but I’m still convinced he’s a psychopath who’s watched Faceoff one too many times_.

“It’s really not necessary to involve my brother in this,” says Illya’s evil clone once Napoleon looks up from his phone, and the superficial resemblance is still so uncanny Napoleon’s torn between holding a gun to his head and dragging him close as if this is Illya, _found_.

“Oh, it’s not necessary, it’s just fun,” Napoleon says brightly. “I wonder what he’ll enjoy more. Hearing you had his partner under surveillance for two weeks or that you’ve been inadvertently financing terrorism. Or maybe the part where you’re trying to sweet talk me into giving you witness protection when you haven’t even taken me out to dinner.”

Evil clone has the decency to look slightly repentant, shoulders hunched. He sets his forearms down on Napoleon’s countertop, cuffs sliding up his wrists to reveal a band of skin about an inch wide and two shades paler than the rest of him, faintly circular in the middle where a watch face would be.

“Look, I’ve done some things I’m not proud of. And I could run, I’ve gotten good at it, but – I want to start righting a few wrongs. Better late than never, isn’t that what they say?”

Napoleon feels a fissure in his resolve, maybe because he’s always had a knack for picking out a lie, or maybe because he stares and still sees Illya, who doesn’t have a deceitful bone in his body.

Then the doorbell rings for the second time today.

“I am going to kill him.” This time the real Illya barrels through the door wearing black trousers and a black turtleneck that should’ve been burned in the 80s, fury electric. “I am going to disembowel him and then strangle him with his own intestines.”

*

Evil clone’s name, which Napoleon finally learns after no one gets disemboweled and everyone calms down, is Alexei, which feels harsher than Illya on his tongue for all Alexei’s obvious enthusiasm for assimilating into American culture. While Illya, who hasn’t set foot in the motherland since he packed a backpack and hitchhiked a thousand miles to Berlin 12 years ago, nurtures an inexplicable, mulish refusal to be uprooted.

“Anyone want a drink? I need a drink,” Napoleon says suddenly, temples throbbing, disoriented, irritable, and, frankly, more than a little sexually frustrated, undecided as to whether the universe is testing him or conceding, in its twisted way, to his wildest, most sordid fantasy. Either way, it’s definitely having a fucking laugh, he thinks as he viciously twists the cap off a new bottle of Jack and pours himself a finger, then a second. 

He’s going for his third when a large hand engulfs the glass.

“Slow down, Cowboy,” Illya says, a little crease of concern appearing between his brows that Napoleon wants to smooth out with his thumb so it doesn’t mar Illya’s stupidly perfect face. “I need you sober.”

“He means he needs you to grab my legs if I try to run,” Alexei says dryly, reaching for Napoleon’s glass. “I think I’ll have that drink now.”

He throws it back in one abrupt motion. Napoleon stares at the exposed arc of his throat, long and pale, and thinks about the one and only time he saw Illya drink and hilariously fail to hold his liquor, eyes preternaturally bright, laughing because he _could_. It’d been after their fourth case together, nothing to write home about, but something in Illya had yielded, opened haltingly but so beautifully that, for Napoleon, there was no going back.

“I can handle you myself, _mladshiy brat_ ,” says Illya, voice hard and barely recognizable,” or have you forgotten Bahrain?”

“You just had to bring up Bahrain,” Alexei mumbles, making a grab at Napoleon’s whiskey.

Napoleon moves it out of his reach and says eagerly, “I’d like to hear about Bahrain.”

*

“You’ve been tracking your own brother for five months and you didn’t have the slightest suspicion he’d come after me?” Napoleon asks, incredulous. He’s distracted, just for a second, by the sharp little smirk on Alexei’s face he’s seen often enough on Illya’s to know by heart.

“It is difficult to know exactly how his twisted mind works,” Illya mutters defensively.

“I have this pesky habit of outsmarting him,” Alexei clarifies, kicking his smugness up another notch. “I’ll see your Bahrain and raise you Tel Aviv.”

Then Napoleon thinks about what he said. Five months. _Five months_.

“I need to talk to you alone. _Now_.”

After marching Illya into the study and closing the door, Napoleon just looks at him, tight-lipped, heart sinking like a stone, before saying quietly, “This is why you stayed in New York. Why no one batted an eye when you walked out on Saturday. They knew. Everyone knew.”

He sticks a hand in his hair and pulls, trying to get his breaths under control while Illya – Illya stands there, looking apologetic and still so goddamn self-righteous Napoleon wants to break his nose.

“Alexei and I joined Interpol together,” Illya finally says. “It was never something he wanted but after our father – ” 

He pauses, tugging at the watch on his wrist that Napoleon’s come to regard as an extension of him, impervious to change. 

“When we were children, he always listened to me. Wherever I went, he was never far behind. Two years ago he disappeared, left a note telling me not to look for him, to let him go. And that was what I did – until he caught Interpol’s attention again, this time by stealing art and antiquities from private collections, dealing in counterfeit bonds. It was hubris. He wanted a reputation, infamy. Still, it was mostly rumor, no hard evidence, and he was slippery to track,” Illya says, clearly pained by the admission. “Then, six months ago, I received intel he was planning to enter the U.S., and on Saturday my source told me he was in the city.”

“Jesus,” Napoleon manages to say before sitting down hard in the armchair, elbows on his knees. “If your brother didn’t just make my life a hell of a lot harder, I’d almost be impressed.”

To which Illya responds, humorlessly, with, “Now you understand what I have put up with for 29 years.”

*

Napoleon ends up eating the pastrami sandwich, though not before remarking that the only thing he hates more than a bald-faced bribe is a poorly veiled one.

“I can’t make any guarantees,” he tells Alexei as he sucks dressing off his fingers and, out of the corner of his eye, watches Illya watch him, assiduously, a twitch in his jaw that can’t be anything other than a tell; Napoleon just hasn’t figured out exactly what it’s telling him yet. “I’ll get you a meeting with Waverly. The Bureau’s been after this group for years – but I’m sure you’ve already done your research.”

“In the meantime, you stay with me,” Illya says, tone brooking no argument.

Alexei smiles winningly and Napoleon bites his tongue. He’s gone undercover often enough to know a con when he sees one, but nothing comes back to bite you in the ass harder than sticking your nose in a family affair.

“If you insist, _Illyushka_.”

“Tomorrow we will talk to Gaby and Waverly together,” Illya tells Napoleon, pointedly ignoring his brother. “I – ”

Then he stops, visibly distressed, as if he never meant to bring this down on Napoleon’s head, but to apologize would be to admit to a fundamental flaw in him that he couldn’t fix if he tried.

In the end all he says is, “Good night,” and all but drags Alexei out the door before he can get in another word.

An hour later, Napoleon gets a call from an unknown number. 

When he answers he hears, “You sound incredibly charming when you’re not hostile, has anyone ever told you that?” purred in a facsimile of Illya’s voice.

He pinches the bridge of his nose, feeling that headache creeping in.

“How did you – never mind. What do you want?”

“To make up for my behavior today. You said I should’ve taken you to dinner first. How about Wednesday?”

Napoleon blinks, then frowns. “I said you _didn’t_ take me out to dinner, there’s a difference. And I know you’re doing this just to piss off Illya.”

“You realize you’re the one who keeps bringing him up, not me,” Alexei says, and Napoleon can just hear the depth of his self-satisfaction. “Come on, accept my humble gesture of goodwill.”

Napoleon narrows his eyes, pacing the length of his living room, figuring he has more to gain than lose. Alexei Kuryakin resides in that gray, nebulous area between enemy and friend that Napoleon enjoys navigating as much as anyone enjoys taking shots in the dark in his line of work – which means the sooner he shines some light over it the better, and the more likely he’ll walk out of this alive.

“Fine,” he snaps. “Just don’t do anything stupid, because you haven’t seen hostile.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _mladshiy brat_ \- little brother (according to Google translate only)
> 
> And, yes, I absolutely was inspired by Armie Hammer's role in The Social Network. Who could resist writing double the Peril?


	3. Chapter 3

Two days after their inauspicious meeting and one day before Alexei’s face-to-face with Waverly, Napoleon meets him for dinner. Blue Hill, Napoleon’s choice, is full but quiet on Wednesday evening, soft lighting and earthy tones soothing, recalling the comforts of home.

It’s when they’re being seated that Napoleon sees the watch on Alexei’s wrist – Illya’s watch, and their father’s before that.

“I haven’t once in five months seen Illya without that thing,” he says, carefully, after the hostess leaves.

Alexei looks caught off-guard for just a second before he smiles, soft, a little vulnerable, one of his better cons.

“I didn’t steal it if that’s what you want to know.”

Napoleon hums, noncommittal. “I’d like to give Illya a little more credit, wouldn’t you?”

“Depends on the stakes,” Alexei says, this time with a grin made of something between silk and steel. “But this one – yea, maybe.”

He reaches for the watch, laying his palm over the face then sliding his fingers down the strap – the same way Illya does, only not quite as urgent or as fastidious, like if it went missing, it wouldn’t haunt him or break his heart.

“I lost the one he gave me. Looked a lot like this, same watchmaker. I told him I’d already gotten used to not wearing one. Plus I have a habit of losing things, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer, stubborn bastard.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I know how you feel,” Napoleon tells him dryly.

The waiter comes by to take their drink order and Napoleon’s reaching for the wine list when Alexei lays a hand on his, palm warm, fingers light.

“If the _Codamonte_ is still available, we’ll have a bottle.”

Napoleon blinks, knowing he should bristle at the presumption, but Alexei’s warmth is making its way down to his bones and Alexei’s profile is caught at an angle that makes his throat ache, its landscape both uncharted and familiar, and he’s not sure what’s more dangerous.

“You’ve been here before.”

“You’d be surprised to hear the places I’ve been,” Alexei says, smiling.

“Somehow I doubt it,” Napoleon says, with less sarcasm than he intended.

“Piedmont ranks pretty high on the list. The wine, the food, the indulgence. The way one day slides into the next, slow as molasses. It’s infused with life and filled with people who know how to live it. What’s not to like?” Alexei’s leaning forward now, eyes beautifully lit with an enthusiasm that feels as religious as it does irreverent, and Napoleon imagines the most spectacular mistake he could make would be to underestimate this man.

So he says, in a play to shift the momentum, “So help me understand something. You’re a smart guy. Infinitely capable, judging by your tenure at Interpol. You probably have excellent instincts. And yet you didn’t realize the profits from your stolen art were being used to arm extremists until they executed your contact and threatened to do the same to you.”

Alexei’s face darkens by degrees, mouth twisting in displeasure – an ugly slash across a work of art, and Napoleon feels a brief pang of regret.

“We all have our blind spots,” he mutters. “I’d attracted a little too much attention in Europe so I didn’t want to fence the art myself. Hahn said his buyers were curators. It was a tidy solution, until it wasn’t. I’ve learned my lesson, trust me.”

Which is when their waiter shows up again with the bottle of _Codamonte_ and stops Napoleon from saying, _actually, I don’t_.

*

Because the wine is lush and aromatic, and reminds Napoleon of sprawling _palazzi_ and rolling hills, he doesn’t press Alexei about his poor life choices. Which means, barring an argument about the intent behind Vermeer’s _Girl With A Pearl Earring_ that dredges up some old resentment, the whole thing is actually _pleasant_. In fact, it’s possibly the most pleasant meal he’s had in months – and the irony doesn’t escape him, nor does the point it makes about his present quality of life.

When they get off at his stop and walk to the brownstone, he doesn’t mention that it’s entirely out of Alexei’s way.

But on the steps as he retrieves his keys from his pocket, he says, “Do I need to remind you this was your humble gesture of goodwill?”

“I’m open to redefining ‘goodwill,’” Alexei says, smile easy, eyes predatory, the size of him making Napoleon feel caged in, even at arm’s length. “You know, you’re beautiful when you loosen up, live a little.”

It sounds like a line he’s used on all his marks, and Napoleon would tell him as much – only he’s stepping forward, crowding Napoleon against the door, sensing a weakness, hairline fractures in Napoleon’s resolve splitting wider because he’s pushing up against Napoleon’s fingertips, _here_ , and warm and offering everything.

Napoleon lifts a hand to grip the lapel of Alexei’s wool jacket, staring at the delicate sweep of his lashes, long enough to knit a goddamn sweater and socks to match. He’s still drawing a breath when Alexei kisses him, coy at first and then demanding, tongue sweeping over the seam of his lips, coaxing them open before sliding inside. It’s hot, slick, a little filthy, and just this side of rough, and it makes Napoleon feel starved, push up and in like there are still spaces, unbearable, that they haven’t closed.

He thinks this must be what Illya tastes like, what Illya would feel like, full weight bearing down on him with all the focus and none of the rage. He thinks this could be how Illya sounds, coming willingly apart –

And then he jerks back, banging his head against his front door. 

Alexei blinks slowly, pupils blown, mouth wet and swollen, looking goddamn achingly beautiful and bewildered before smiling, just a little, like he’s known all along but he won’t apologize because there’s enough blame to go around. 

So Napoleon just tips his head back against the door and tries not to punch something when he hears Alexei say quietly, “It’s not me you want.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Blue Hill is a real restaurant in Manhattan and is featured in the Netflix series, _Chef's Table_ , so you can go watch that episode and salivate over the food if you're so inclined.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To preempt any confusion: Interpol is headquartered in France.

He spends the next week stewing first in self-pity and then self-loathing, and if Illya notices, he doesn’t mention it. Mostly, he’s twitched on the sidelines, watching his brother get shuttled back and forth between New York and D.C. to hash out his witness protection with attorneys, the Marshals Service, and DOJ. Napoleon, having vetted a candidate a year and a half ago, imagines the bureaucracy alone is enough to make Alexei regret ever setting foot on American soil – which cheers him up considerably, if only because Illya’s as tense as Napoleon’s ever seen him, stretched like a rubber band that’s about to snap or strike, and knowing Illya, neither conclusion would be bloodless.

On Thursday, Napoleon thinks it probably can’t get any worse. Which means, in accordance with the rules of the universe, it does.

“I assume you’ve heard about White Collar’s new case,” he says to Illya after lunch, hip against Illya’s desk, because he’d rather preempt an elephant in the room than have to clean up the mess after.

Illya’s eyes slide from his computer to Napoleon, aggravatingly opaque. His tie, a sensible solid blue, traditional width, and the slightest bit off-center, makes Napoleon’s hand twitch.

“Yes,” Illya says, before returning to his work like that’s the end of that. Then, after a long pause during which Napoleon refuses to budge, he adds, “de Kooning’s _Black and White_ , valued at approximately 32 million, was stolen from the Whitney last night shortly before closing. After reviewing the preliminary evidence, they have judged my brother to be a viable suspect.”

In truth, Alexei is their _only_ suspect, but Napoleon doesn’t say that.

Instead he says, “He’s already been pulled into witness protection, so Graham can’t touch him. Funny how that turned out,” then watches Illya’s jaw clench.

“If you are asking whether I think he is guilty, then yes, I do. If you are asking whether I knew or had any suspicion of his plan, then no, I did not. As you said, there is nothing to be done.”

“Jesus, of course I didn’t think you were complicit, in any of it. None of this is your fault.” For all Illya keeps his emotions on a cruel leash, Napoleon can hear the self-recrimination.

Illya reaches up to pinch the bridge of his nose, suddenly looking bone-tired, like he’s been fighting the same losing battle for so long he can’t remember the point of the goddamn war.

“If you are not here to blame me, then what do you want from me?”

Napoleon presses his lips together, pausing before starting with, “Illya – ,” which makes Illya jerk a little because Napoleon only ever says it when he’s drunk, or when he’s bleeding out on the sidewalk with Illya cushioning his head, ordering him not to die.

He realizes he’s fucking this all up. What he intended to do was to make sure Illya isn’t being willfully ignorant about his brother’s intentions, that he doesn’t give up everything only to get nothing in return. Napoleon’s not stupid enough to think he has Illya all figured out, but if the value placed on a secondhand watch is anything to go by, or the lengths to which a person would go to find a brother who didn’t want to be found, then he can conclude with little doubt that when it comes to family, Illya would forgive them anything, small or terrible.

But what Napoleon’s succeeded in doing is sounding like an asshole; for all he’s good with people, he’s completely inept at relationships.

So he says, without preamble, “The night Alexei and I went to dinner, he walked me home and I kissed him. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life but that one ranks pretty high. I need you to know that.”

*

A day and a half after his declaration of guilt and the lack of fallout that leaves him equal parts grateful and dissatisfied, he finds Alexei on his doorstep again. This time Alexei’s wearing a fucking _fedora_ , which, if there was any justice in the world, should make him look like a dick, but instead makes him look like a hipster Frank Sinatra.

“What, no pastrami sandwiches today?” Napoleon leans against the doorframe, crossing his arms.

“Alexei Kuryakin will be wiped from existence in a week. I thought I’d say goodbye, and thanks, for what it’s worth. I’ll always think about what we could’ve been.”

The sentiment, the smile, the eyes – it’s all beautifully executed, and Napoleon just breathes and stares, and wonders how he almost fooled himself into thinking Alexei and Illya could be interchangeable. Alexei, who lies without compunction, burns through one life after another, and Illya, who lives his painstakingly, fierce and fearful, like it’s his last chance to get it right.

“I’ve wondered what it’d be like to start with a clean slate,” Napoleon says eventually. “If it’s true what they say – your mistakes always finding a way of catching up with you.” 

Alexei tilts his head, considering, like a man accustomed to threats.

Then he says, “I know you told Illya about that night,” which is about the last thing Napoleon expected. 

He raises an eyebrow, trying not to look blindsided. “He told you.”

“Not in so many words – you know how he is,” Alexei shrugs, smile shrinking into something that would be unseen, unfelt, if it weren’t so affectionate. “He likes to pretend he doesn’t wear his heart on his sleeve.”

What Napoleon knows about Alexei and Illya’s history amounts to the little Illya told him two weeks ago. What Napoleon sees now is that for all the sins committed and the severed ties, something runs through them that’s impervious to change, a product of biology and time. He sees Alexei would’ve done anything for his brother, once, and that maybe he wishes things were still so simple.

“The funny thing is, it makes you want to tell the truth, watching him pretend,” Napoleon says, this time with a little less bite and a little more reciprocity.

Alexei looks at his feet, then down the street at the dogwood trees, the toys belonging to the neighbor’s kid littering the sidewalk, the lull of upper-crust suburbia. When he turns back, there’s something different about him, something that makes Napoleon think, viscerally, of Illya, and it takes him a second to figure out why.

“He loves the rain,” Alexei tells him, face utterly guileless. “He has a weakness for sweets filled with custard – the thick, decadent kind, not the watered-down shit. He couldn’t tell a Renoir from a Degas if his life depended on it, but he can hum “Nessun dorma” in his sleep. He – he needs to be reminded once in a while that he can hold onto a beautiful thing without breaking it.”

*

Napoleon has never been the kind of man who puts all his eggs in one basket. Put another way: he’s built 34 years of life on the distinction between being lonely and being alone. He enjoys company, he enjoys the sex even more, but he steers clear of cultivated dependency, shared spaces, compromise. And if that makes him a sad son of a bitch, then he likes to say the past informs the present, which is a story that goes something like this:

Napoleon Solo inherited a fickle heart. He might’ve found it in him to overcome biology, but he was also never taught any better. His parents’ 30-year marriage had been the loveless, bloodless kind, marked by long absences that felt like abandonment at six and freedom at sixteen. At home his father divided his time neatly between scotch and apathy. His mother always smelled beautiful and expensive, but never warm. 

For years when Napoleon thought about love, he pictured those paper hearts on their pale string, hung up every February from first to fifth grade, a true, vivid red, so perfectly sized and shaped from one year to the next that they seemed eternal, unmoved by the stream of time.

*

The next morning Napoleon sleeps through his alarm, drops his razor in the toilet, forgets to transfer off the F, then just gives up and walks the remaining ten blocks to the office, feeling the residue of last night’s dream like a chemically-induced haze. Eyes opened, he sees skyscrapers, yellow cabs, the unassuming breakfast cart that makes the best egg and sausage on a croissant he’s ever had. Eyes closed, he’s in an ocean, fathoms deep and dark as pitch, with Illya drowning right next to him, sinking like a dropped anchor – only, when he saves them both, it’s Alexei coughing up saltwater, head lolling against his shoulder, murmuring over the foaming waves, _it’s not me you want_.

When he gets to his desk, lungs feeling abused, breaths shallow, he realizes his cuffs are still unbuttoned, tie still slung loose around his neck.

“Wild night?”

All of a sudden Illya’s standing two feet away, eyebrows subtly raised, mouth solemn by default – but soft, with a secret willingness to smile that isn’t a secret at all if you pay attention.

“Ah, no, just – bizarre dreams. And then a string of little disasters that conspired to make me – ” Napoleon checks his watch, “ – an hour late, oops.”

He’s flipping up the collar of his Oxford and reaching for the ends of his tie when Illya steps around the desk. 

“Let me.” Illya gently bats his hands away, standing close enough for the tips of their shoes to touch, and Napoleon can’t help taking a deep breath to pull in that clean warm scent that makes him think of a summer breeze over the Hudson, ripe red wine in his mouth, and finding something thriving in a place where nothing thrived before. “To prevent another disaster.”

Illya loops the tie, a smile tugging at his lips now. Napoleon wonders if it’d be unprofessional of him to jump Illya right here, back him against the desk, or maybe push him down in the chair so Napoleon has a height advantage for once, then lick into his mouth and make him moan.

“I don’t know,” Napoleon murmurs, “I’ve seen some of the things you wear. It can be pretty disastrous.”

“I may not waste my time on fashion like you, Cowboy. Does not mean I do not understand it,” Illya says dryly, sliding the knot up to the base of Napoleon’s throat. “One of the hazards of living in France is that the French insist, tirelessly, on doing everything with style.”

“France.” Napoleon rolls the word around in his mouth before swallowing it down, feeling it carve a space through his chest like a prelude to loss. “I guess they’ll want you back now that you’ve done what you came here to do.”

“Yes,” Illya says, honesty unfailing and uncomplicated. Then his hands still around Napoleon’s collar. “You were never part of the mission. Never anything less than a partner. I need you to know this.”

And Napoleon understands – it’s not an apology made out of guilt to assuage any bitterness that might be festering quietly between them; it’s a conclusion arrived at after months of hoping your partner doesn’t do something so stupid as get you killed, and then trusting he won’t.

Napoleon’s about to say, _you really are a sentimental bastard_ , and then, if he can find the guts, _France doesn’t want you like I do_.

Then he sees Gaby out of the corner of his eye, standing in the door of her office, calling them over with a crook of her finger.

She’s sitting on the edge of her desk when they walk in, wearing the black pant suit with the white lapels that makes her look, for all her size, like she can break a man with two fingers. Her palms are flat against the desk, lips pressed into a thin bloodless line. 

Rain’s starting to streak the windows, clouds obscuring the sky in a thick, slow-moving mass.

“The car transporting your brother was ambushed about an hour ago,” she says, turning to Illya, voice low with banked fury. “Someone must’ve had eyes on them for days. Two agents are dead.”

“And Alexei?” Napoleon barely hears Illya’s question over the roaring in his ears, the gathering momentum of an ocean tide.

“We lost him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Nessun dorma" is one of the arias in Puccini's _Turandot_.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of violence ahead.

For a long moment the only sound is the thunderstorm breaking overhead, lashing against the window in vicious stripes until the city looks drowned from where they’re standing.

“An hour,” Napoleon finally says, with the composure drilled into him by his years at Quantico being an overachiever knowing there was nothing to go back to if he fucked it up. “It took us an hour to notice two dead agents and a missing witness?”

“They’ve made the trip half a dozen times. There was no reason to think this time would go any differently.”

“If we think it’s Thrush, then the most likely scenario is – ” Napoleon pauses, words stuck somewhere between his teeth and his throat, which is when Illya fills in the rest, staring down the rain like it’s veiling some truth that could set everything right.

“They will get the information they want before they kill him.”

“I have NYPD pulling feeds from traffic cameras on every street corner and coordinating with – ” Gaby says before Illya cuts her off.

“No. There is no need. I embedded a tracker in his watch.”

*

A half hour later they’re calling in SWAT, Gaby and Illya are coming to blows over Illya’s involvement, and Napoleon’s staying the hell out of everyone’s way in case someone tries to bully him into taking a side.

“You seem to be forgetting who’s calling the shots,” Gaby says tersely as they make their way down to garage level. “You’re sitting this one out, Illya.”

Illya’s clenching his jaw, looking like he might snap the neck of the first person who looks at him the wrong way.

“He is my brother. I am responsible for – ”

“No, you’re not, because this isn’t personal,” Gaby cuts in. “And I can’t have you forgetting that in a rescue operation. I’ve seen agents forget, and it doesn’t matter how good they are, it never ends well.”

There’s a protracted, brittle silence before Illya intones, “You are calling the shots,” and Napoleon, who isn’t so easily fooled, suspects it’s not so much a concession as it is a play.

“If you’re planning on doing something that might get us both killed, I feel like I deserve a say,” Napoleon tells Illya ten minutes later when he’s strapping on his tactical gear.

“Do you not trust me?” Illya says, smiling like it’s what people do in situations that look bleak no matter how you slice it.

“Now that’s a loaded question.”

“It is a simple question,” Illya says, because of course he would. Because while most people go out of their way to take the path of least resistance, Illya walks the straightest one, regardless – and more often than not drags Napoleon with him.

“No – it was simple before the brother you never mentioned showed up on my doorstep. It was simple before I found out Interpol hadn’t loaned you out indefinitely because they were feeling nice. It was simple when my back was the only one you were watching. So, actually, I don’t know if I trust you.”

Turns out Napoleon’s been harboring a little resentment, a little rage.

“Napoleon – ” Illya starts, then stops, and that’s something else he does. He says Napoleon’s name in that tone, with those eyes, like it’s something irreparable if broken, and makes Napoleon think he’d let Illya get away with murder, given the choice.

So he shoves his 45 into its harness and says, “I prefer not to die. But if I do, rest assured my ghost will haunt you the rest of your life.”

*

Illya’s tracker pinpoints Alexei to an old treatment plant in Bay Ridge, with only a freeway separating it from the community park that fills with dogs and children in beautiful weather, and today it’s beautiful. From the Bureau’s experience, it’s the kind of thing Thrush likes – demonstrating that morality isn’t a dichotomy, it’s a spectrum, that the horrific and the mundane, what’s safe and what’s dangerous, thrive in a single space, like a murderer washing blood off his hands in a public fountain.

What’s more, they make a point of playing a chess game where they can see the entire board and their opponents are moving blind, so when three minutes into the mission it all goes to shit, Napoleon can’t say he’s surprised.

He hears the compact blows of sniper rounds before he sees McKinney and Wong go down and feels one shredding his own thigh – not armor-piercing, just hurts like hell. There’s yelling, bodies being dragged, but no one dead as far as he can tell. By the time they take cover against barrels of waste stacked high by the northeast corner, it’s gone completely quiet, and he figures Thrush is toying with them, letting them make their move before dealing a harder blow. That, or Alexei’s already dead and these are parting shots.

“I’m going in, cover me,” Napoleon says into his comm, and starts moving before he gets a reply.

He slips into the building and heads down a corridor that ends before he can blink, feeding him into a wide, cavernous space, windows curving along the vaulted ceilings, the smell of decay, so thick there’s no airing it out – and Alexei sitting right in the middle of it all, bound to a chair, a woman beside him with a slash of blood drying on her impeccable white trousers. Victoria Vinciguerra, shipping magnate. Net worth: 2.3 billion. Political ideology: neo-fascism. Likes: Paris fashion week, Fabergé, dissecting a man with surgical precision.

“Napoleon Solo, it’s a shame we couldn’t meet under more civilized circumstances.”

Before he can call for back-up, someone knocks him down from behind with a blow between his shoulder blades and stomps on his wrist, kicking his MP5 halfway across the room. Then he’s twisting on instinct, grabbing his 45 with his non-dominant hand and emptying two precise rounds into the guy’s chest.

Which is when Illya – Jesus – Illya storms in wearing his goddamn turtleneck and leather jacket like a fucking vigilante, and proceeds to take out the other three bodyguards in quick, brutal succession, shooting the first two in the shoulder and knees, and pistol-whipping the third. By the time he aims his gun at Vinciguerra, she’s gone and it’s just Alexei now, stripped of his jacket and tie, shirt more crimson than white but face virtually untouched, just ashen from the pain and the blood loss.

“The snipers – ” Napoleon says before Illya cuts him off, standing there staring at his brother for a minute, tremors shaking him through like he’s standing on a fault line.

“Only one. I took care of him.”

When Illya finally moves, he walks over to Alexei and kneels down, staring for a minute longer before bowing his head.

“You’re a second slower than you used to be,” Alexei says with some effort. “You’re getting old, _Illyushka_ – ”

“ _Prosti pozhaluysta_ ,” Illya cuts in – a low, plaintive sound that carries across the empty space. “Forgive me.”

There’s another interlude of silence before Alexei answers.

“There’s nothing to forgive.”

Only, nothing sounds like every damn thing they carry, but it’s a mutual, incalculable weight, the kind that doesn’t diminish across space or time because there’s no cutting loose the choices they’ve made, so all they can hope for is to bear it while putting one foot in front of the other.

“Solo.” Gaby’s voice filters through his earpiece. “Can you hear me – what’s your status? Have you located Kuryakin?”

“Yea, this is Solo. I have him,” Napoleon says, watching Illya, still on his knees, untying Alexei’s wrists, the right then the left. “We have him now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prosti pozhaluysta - I'm sorry.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At last, this fic lives up to its M rating.

Napoleon’s seen the swath of destruction a .223 cuts through a man, so the tissue damage to his thigh is minimal, considering. He’s patched up at NYP-LMH along with half the team, then sits through his debrief at the office nursing coffee that warms his insides if nothing else, good leg twitching because none of it feels resolved. He gives his report by rote, all the while plucking at loose ends trying to figure out if he’s the one untethered, or if it’s everything else.

By the time he heads back to Brooklyn, the sun’s already dropped below the horizon, sky sapped of color save for a residual warmth tracing the line of the East River, reluctant to fade.

When he walks through his front door, he takes his shoes off in the dark, makes his way to the kitchen in the dark, and pours a scotch in the dark, the ache in him no longer localized, so widespread now he feels it in his goddamn eyelids. He should probably pop a few more Vicodin and then sleep a good eight hours. Instead he just stands there, hunched over the countertop, swirling his drink until it forms a whirlpool in his glass, and thinks about the three minutes he left off the record – a fragile peace brokered in the middle of a tired war so that something might be salvaged – because as far as the Bureau was concerned, there had been nothing to see or hear.

He’s down a quarter bottle of scotch and trying to remember if he’s eaten anything other than coffee and mints in the last 24 hours when the doorbell rings.

He finds Illya on his doorstep, face a chalky gray under the low light, eyes sweeping the length of him, once with purpose, the second time like a knee jerk.

“Are you hurt? If you lie to me, I will know.”

“Bullet glanced off my thigh. I got off easy,” Napoleon says and tries not to favor his left leg as he lets Illya in.

“There are two things in life I would never call easy,” Illya says, picking up the Laphroaig once they’re in the kitchen and weighing it in his hand before pouring himself a finger in Napoleon’s glass. “The first is shooting a man. The second is getting shot.”

Seeing how terrorists tortured your brother probably also ranks pretty high, but Napoleon doesn’t say it. For all they’ve worked side-by-side, day in and day out the last few months, there’s still plenty of eggshells on the ground, demarcations they’ve long etched out, he and Illya both, tortuous and deep, between who they are and who they need to be.

So Napoleon says instead, “You’re missing the point, Peril. I’m mostly concerned with the distinction between dead and alive.”

Which is when the glass in Illya’s hand shatters.

Napoleon jerks back reflexively. “ _Fuck_!”

There’s a few shards strewn on the countertop but most of the destruction is contained neatly in Illya’s palm. Napoleon stares at the drip of scotch mingled with blood as he eases his heart rate with his breaths.

“I think I may need a bandage,” Illya says, conversationally, after assessing the damage.

“You’re lucky I learned a thing or two as a Boy Scout,” Napoleon says evenly, walking over to the far-left cabinet to retrieve the First Aid kit and then switching on the lights.

Illya’s blinking owlishly, hand cupped, blood pooling in his palm lines, looking smaller somehow, more beaten, out of the dark, and Napoleon steers him to the sink first, trying not to choke on the sentiment thickening in his throat, an alchemy of possessiveness and affection making him think, a little deliriously, that maybe he isn’t flawed by nature.

“This is why I can’t take you anywhere,” he says lightly when they’re seated beside the kitchen table, knees knocking together.

He takes Illya’s hand, coaxing it open with a brush of his thumb across Illya’s knuckles, then clenches his jaw at the sight. The cuts are shallow for the most part, blood already starting to clot, nothing a little time can’t fix, and it doesn’t look like an accident; it looks like an exercise in masochism, a ledger detailing his debts, the largest one slashed across his heart line with a shard of glass stuck in the middle for good measure.

“You don’t think you’ve done your job until you’re bleeding all over the floor, is that it?” Napoleon snaps, digging viciously through his kit for tweezers.

Illya is silent, unnervingly still, until he says, “I lied to you, the day Alexei appeared. He did not run away. I pushed him away.”

Napoleon pauses, tweezers in hand, and chooses to say nothing, afraid of disrupting the incremental erosion under his feet.

“I assume you have read my file so you know all about my father. His incarceration as a political dissident suspected of treason, his death from pneumonia three years later, shortly after an American lawyer helped him reopen the case. A few more months and he could have been a free man. Then my mother died, from heartache, although the doctors called it _systolic failure_ , and I could no longer stay. I left and Alexei chose to follow, and for some time it felt like an entirely new life, divorced from everything we knew so there were no reminders, no ghosts. Painful, how naïve we were.”

Napoleon wants to say it’s not naivety, it’s survival, _resilience_ , but he suspects it would take time, patience, and sheer force of will to change Illya’s mind, so he keeps quiet as he sets the tweezers down and reaches for the gauze.

“We thought we could bury the past, but how could we. It stays in our blood, in our bones. By the time I understood that, it was too late. The resentment between us – it was like a cancer we could not root out. Maybe both of us had planted it there, but I allowed it to grow, I _nurtured_ it. We had lost everything and someone was to blame. Not our country, not the legal system, those were big ideas that made us feel powerless. So it was down to the two of us.”

When Illya finishes he looks down at his bandaged hand, flexing his fingers, then turns to Napoleon, who’s thought up no less than five ways to try to make things right, only, he imagines when your bones are this heavy, it’s not so much about what’s right than it is about what’s bearable.

Napoleon scoots a little closer to press his knees firmly against Illya’s, feeding the warmth of their shared space.

“If you want my two cents, then this is what I think. You were just kids. You grew up too quickly, but you did the best you could. I also think – if you asked, Alexei would still do anything for you. So maybe you can start forgiving yourself,” Napoleon says, then pauses, watching Illya’s limbs loosen by degrees, a redistribution of weight that eases a chronic ache. “My family – now that’s a different beast. My parents weren’t – warm. They didn’t pack my lunch or teach me how to drive. In hindsight, they didn’t have the instinct or the capacity for parenting. But hey, they were there. They still are.”

Illya considers him for a second before saying, “Absence can be felt in different ways. But they all leave a hole in you in the end.”

Only, it doesn’t sound bleak; it sounds bearable, conquerable, even, and Napoleon feels the need to incite something cataclysmic, grabbing him by the throat like terror only sweeter. He looks at Illya and sees how he’s lived a selfish life, a cowardly one, insulating himself by making sure he had nothing to lose, but he has something now and he never learned how this is supposed to go, but he figures the only thing left to do is to _have_ it, wholly, before it’s lost.

So Napoleon says, “Illya,” to make him pay attention, and then Napoleon leans in to kiss him, light and chaste, to give him an out.

There’s a choked-off, needy sound before Illya’s sliding the knuckles of his good hand along Napoleon’s jaw, thumb brushing the cleft of his chin, raking at the stubble, making him shiver. Then finally, _finally_ , Illya’s all in, slanting their mouths together and _taking_ , nipping at Napoleon’s bottom lip, then sliding his tongue in when Napoleon opens up, eager and pliant, and – _Jesus_ – Illya’s mouth is scorching and sweet, bent on ruining him for anyone else. 

But then Illya’s pulling away, just enough to say, throaty and dangerous, “Now that you have had both of us, you can tell me who you prefer.”

Napoleon blinks stupidly, hazy with lust, until the words compute, the barefaced _jealousy_ , and it goes straight to his cock, a moan making its way up his throat before he swallows it down, fingers digging into Illya’s shoulders.

“You, goddamn it, y – ” Illya’s mouth cuts him off, and Illya’s hands are gripping his hips, hauling him halfway off his chair before he catches on and tips the rest of the way into Illya’s lap, moaning, low and shameless now, because even through the layers Illya feels solid and hot and _good_ against him.

Which is when he hears the sound of splitting wood beneath him, because the chair they’re in is understandably not equipped to bear their combined weight given that Illya is an honest-to-God freak of nature.

So Napoleon drags his mouth away and says, “Since breaking furniture is probably a lot sexier in the movies than it is in real life, why don’t we move to the bedroom.”

They only make it as far as the living room couch because his hand’s found its way around Illya’s cock, wringing sounds out of Illya that he knows for sure will haunt him, and then Illya’s using one big hand to fist them both, pace ruthless, just this side of painful, and so fucking perfect Napoleon’s toes curl when he comes, teeth sunk into the tendon in Illya’s shoulder, dragging Illya over the edge behind him.

“I want – ” he says when he lifts his head up, then whimpers a little when Illya slides a finger down his cock, still oversensitive, but god, he wants it. “I want you to fuck me, in my bed, so hard I still feel you in the morning.”

Illya looks at him, eyes gleaming in the dark like a blade slipped from its sheath, making Napoleon shiver and ache, before he murmurs, “Whatever you want.”

The second time it’s slower, painstaking. They take turns stripping each other, layer by layer, and then Napoleon’s straddling Illya’s thighs on the bed, hands twitching but not touching as he drinks in the sight of him, all exquisite lines and hard edges like some lost masterpiece unearthed continents from home, only living, _warm_. And Illya’s patient, Illya waits, trusting, and then he tips his head back to bare his throat when Napoleon licks at his mouth, then his chin, working his way down until he’s weighing the tip of Illya’s cock on his tongue, then swallowing it down, pulling those sounds from Illya that make his skin feel too tight and his throat itch to swallow them too.

He’s restraining Illya’s hips, taking him deeper, thinking he wants to make Illya scream when he hears Illya say with visible effort, “If you – want me to fuck you, you will have to let me do a little work, Cowboy.”

And suddenly Illya’s hauling him up, kissing him once, thoroughly, patience abandoned, before pressing Napoleon stomach down on the bed, running a hand down his flank and taking no time at all to get a slick finger inside him, then two, and – fuck – it hasn’t been that long but this is Illya spreading him open, Illya’s bandaged hand rough against his spine while the other takes him apart, and he just tries not to choke on his want, cock so fucking hard it _hurts_.

When Illya finally withdraws his fingers and pulls Napoleon up to his knees, he stops abruptly, a hand sliding down Napoleon’s thigh.

“You are bleeding through your bandage,” he says tightly, the way he does when he’s convinced Napoleon has no self-preservation instinct and it’s his unofficial job to save Napoleon from himself.

“Does it look like I give a damn,” Napoleon bites out. “Fuck, just fuck me already – _please_.”

The last word tapers off into a whimper he couldn’t swallow if he tried and as abruptly as Illya stopped, he grips Napoleon’s hip, lines up his cock, and starts pushing in, inch by searing inch until Napoleon feels the burn, sweet and consuming, all the way in his throat, and he lets out a strangled sob that sounds wrecked beyond repair.

“Cowboy – you are breaking my heart,” Illya says, voice low, just as ruined, before he starts fucking Napoleon in earnest, pulling out then driving back in, making Napoleon flail out to grab the headboard and find the leverage to give as good as he’s getting.

It all happens too goddamn quick. Illya’s efficient to a fault, and the precision of his cock paired with the pain in Napoleon’s thigh is an accelerant thrown on a flaming wreck, so Napoleon’s coming before he’s ready, coming without being touched, orgasm slamming into him with the force of a semi, so hard and fast he thinks his heart stops for a second. Illya’s a beat behind him, mouth hot against his shoulder, fingertips carving into his hips as if he’s the anchor and _lost_ is only ever relative.

And then Napoleon’s limbs give out, heavy and sore like he’s just been through one of Illya’s sadistic sparring sessions, and he tells Illya as much.

“A hot shower cures everything,” Illya says, mouth twitching, wearing his self-satisfaction painfully well.

Napoleon twists onto his side so they’re face to face. “I plan to stay in bed indefinitely. You should, too.”

He doesn’t know what he’s asking until it’s out in the open, and then, terrified, he wants to ask again. He wants to say, _I want you when I wake up. I want to know what it’s like, to hold onto something and work to keep it._

Illya’s eyes are beacons in the dark, so luminous they feel deceptively close. “Indefinitely could be a very long time.”

“I never asked how you got this,” Napoleon says suddenly, reaching out with two fingers to trace the thin arc of a scar beside Illya’s eyebrow, because it’s getting unbearable.

“Alexei and I were arguing, I no longer remember why,” Illya tells him, shifting closer, curling a hand around his good leg and dragging him in, voice low and melodic, suited to a child’s bedtime story. “We were 13, so it was probably something very stupid. He threw our mother’s music box at my head. It was a small wound but there was blood everywhere. I had never seen him so sorry before then, so worried about me. The music box had fallen open and it was playing its Russian lullaby, unbroken. Alexei was trying to get the bleeding to stop, trying not to cry, and I said to him, I must have a softer head than we thought. He started laughing. His hands were shaking but he was laughing. And then he replied, next time I will have to aim lower.”

They fall asleep together, with Napoleon’s hand curled against Illya’s collarbone, foot hooked around Illya’s ankle.

When Napoleon wakes up, he's alone.


	7. Chapter 7

Napoleon stares at the ceiling for a minute, cataloguing his physical pains before he rolls out of bed to limp to the shower. His clothes, strewn on the floor last night, have been folded into a neat pile and set on the dresser. In the bathroom he looks into the mirror, running a palm along his jaw then peeling the bandage, blood-caked, off his thigh, pausing in the middle to lay fingertips over the bruises blooming on his hips, applying just enough pressure so he feels the ache.

After showering he pads down to the kitchen barefoot, shirt unbuttoned, tie slung around his neck. The broken glass on the counter has been cleaned up, his First Aid kit and scotch stowed away, kitchen chairs returned to their place around the table, like the end result of someone taking great pains to cover his tracks.

When Napoleon locates his phone, abandoned on the counter, he sees a text from Gaby sent seven minutes ago.

_Illya’s plane takes off in 1 hr from JFK. T1, g4._

He stares at it, turns off the screen, then turns it back on and stares at it some more. He figures this would be the moment in the movie where all the pieces, obvious to the point of absurdity but scattered before, coalesce to form some hard-won truth. Where he’d fly out the door and down the street to hail a cab, half-dressed, only to get stuck in traffic and decide to sprint the rest of the way, yelling Illya’s name just as he’s about to board and then stumbling over something profound about regret and providence.

An hour later, he slips his phone in his pocket, checks his tie in the mirror by the stairs, and goes to work.

*

He spends the next few days considering the wisdom of a lot of things, including but not limited to: remodeling his entire kitchen starting with the mud-brown cabinets he’s always hated, mailing Illya kitschy postcards from one of those tourist shops in Times Square, buying a Maserati, forwarding Illya the package he got at the office with a hand-written letter because, as a self-proclaimed Luddite, he’d probably be pleased as punch, picking up the goddamn phone and calling Illya because they’re adults and it’s the adult thing to do.

A week goes by before he decides, bleakly, that wisdom is something you arrive at on your deathbed and not a minute before. Then Gaby calls him into her office.

“I’m done putting up with your moping,” is what she leads with when he walks in, shutting him up with an aggressive finger when he tries to say something patently untrue like _I’m not moping_. “I considered moving your desk into the copy room until you pull yourself together. Instead, I’m assigning you a partner.”

Before he’s about to say something completely true in theory like, _I work better alone_ , she jerks her head towards the bullpen and adds, “Partner or copy room, Solo. Your choice.”

Which is when he turns and sees Illya sitting at his desk, warming his chair, arranging the pens on his desk in a neat little row, proclivity for order tipping into OCD usually when Illya feels out of control.

The sight knocks the breath clean out of him.

He’s swaying on his feet, losing his center of gravity, finding it, and losing it again like something in him is being recalibrated, the rest of him put on pause.

And then – he’s standing in front of Illya, with no idea how he got from point A to point B, which makes him think the last time that happened was at Dan’s bachelor party three years ago when he woke up face-down, stark naked, and alone on the floor of a hotel room that wasn’t his, smeared with edible glitter and trussed up like a fucking turkey with a ring on his cock. Then he thinks it’d probably ruin the moment to bring that up.

“How – I mean, why are you – not to say I’m not – ” he fumbles, and all the while Illya’s smiling, and smiling and smiling, as if there’s no danger of this brightness in him ever running out, beautifully weightless when before, there had always been something dragging him down.

“I’m sorry I kept you waiting,” is all Illya says, which is both profound and stunningly simple, and Napoleon, who’s gotten by most his life on saying the right things, is at a loss.

Seconds tick by. Illya starts fiddling with the loose latch on the top drawer, uncertainty creeping in, and what Napoleon manages to say in the end is: “You have mail.”

Illya’s forehead creases adorably with confusion. “I’m sorry?”

“Came for you two days ago.” Napoleon pulls the mailing tube out from under his desk. “No return address.”

Illya, frowning now, takes it from Napoleon and swipes a thumb over the label, addressed to _I. Kuryakin_ , before popping the top open.

“My first instinct was bomb, but the mail room cleared – ” Napoleon stops short when Illya rolls the contents out on the desk, sheathed in two layers of plastic. Underneath, black paint zigzags across white paper, thick and furious. “Jesus Christ.”

Illya stares down at it, a finger pressed against each edge to keep them from curling.

“I guess the Whitney will want their painting back.”

“White Collar’s gonna shit a brick, pardon my French.”

Illya looks up, amused and fond – close when he’s supposed to be unreachable, wholly accounted for even though he should be lost, and Napoleon tries this time to keep it simple, if only so nothing’s lost in translation.

“So you planning on staying a while then?”

And Illya, who looks like he’s thought about it for some time, not because he had to dig for it, but because he didn’t even have to try, says, “Indefinitely.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all a hundred times over for reading and following from week to week, and keeping me company. It made writing this all the more fun. <3


End file.
